It should be silly to even suggest that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is under-appreciated.

Over the course of 18 films, the MCU has grossed over $14.8 billion, an amount that is set to rise exponentially now that “Avengers: Infinity War” has been released.

Plus, the lowest score a Marvel film has got on Rotten Tomatoes was 66% for “Thor: The Dark World,” and “Infinity War’s” 85% on the rating site mean it is the first film to drop below 90% since “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” (83%), as “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (92%), “Thor: Ragnarok” (92%) and “Black Panther” (96%) wowed critics.

But when something is so popular there are always going to be naysayers. Most recently James Cameron came out and attacked the MCU, saying he hopes it suffers from “fatigue” soon, while Ridley Scott, Clint Eastwood, Alejandro G Inarritu, Mel Gibson and David Cronenberg are just some of the directors to have attacked, if not Marvel specifically, the superhero genre.

I recently had the chance to speak to Mark Ruffalo, who has portrayed Bruce Banner in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2012’s “The Avengers,” during which time I asked the Oscar nominee whether he felt Marvel was still under-appreciated.

“I think if you’re going to do a movie in the studio system, given the parameters that a franchise situation dictates, you couldn’t really be in a better place.”

“With more collaboration. More trust given to a director than any other studio, probably since United Artists or something.”

"There are some rules. And Kevin [Feige] and Louis [D’Esposito] and Victoria [Alonso] have a lot of input. They know this world so well. They know the audiences.”

“But at the same time they have emulated what Stan Lee was doing. Which was to let his artists be artists. From one comic book collection to the next you’d have wildly different characters. The art would be different. The look. The mood.”

“I think it has been really smart and ballsy and creates a lot of diversity in the Marvel universe by what Kevin has done by following that model.”